preview

Aquinas Cosmological Proof

Good Essays

St. Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological Proof of God’s Existence St. Thomas Aquinas was born in A.D 1225 close to Naples. Thomas Aquinas was the seventh son of lower nobility. Thomas’s parents hoped he would become a person with power and influence, so they sent him to Monte Cassino. Monte Cassino was one of the big, great and wealthy Benedictine monasteries. After the monastery, Thomas went to a University just founded in Naples and it was there that he became a fan of Aristotle’s philosophy. Thomas then went against his family’s wishes, and refused careers in military or politics, and became a friar for the Dominican order. Thomas Aquinas Christianized Aristotle’s philosophy and offered solutions or explanations on God, Humanity, and the Universe. …show more content…

Thomas Aquinas gives us is the Argument from Efficient Cause. St. Thomas Aquinas states that “In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes.” This means that we can see a series of efficient causes of things in this world. Another thing is that something cannot exist before itself, and nothing can be the cause of itself, as stated “There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.” If we take away the first cause of things, then the things that result from the first cause does not exist, “to take away the cause is to take away the effect.” The efficient cause however cannot go on for infinity otherwise there would be nothing that exists now. “if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause.” This means that there must have been a first efficient cause and the first efficient cause, “to which everyone gives the name of God.” In the second way that St. Thomas Aquinas proves God, God is thought of as the Uncaused …show more content…

Thomas Aquinas gives for proof of God’s Existence is the Argument from Gradations of Perfection, or also known as Argument from The Hierarchy of beings. “Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like,” which means that some are better or worse than others. “But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways.” “Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things.” “there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being.” This being is what we would call God. “Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.” God in the fourth way is known as and thought of as the highest, best, and the perfect

Get Access